Rethinking the Irish Diaspora

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction: Gathering Tensions

   • Johanne Devlin Trew, Michael Pierse

   Pages 1-12

3. Epilogue

   • Johanne Devlin Trew, Michael Pierse

   Pages 273-280

4. Policy Contexts and Political Change

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. Diaspora Engagement in Ireland, North and South, in the Shadow of Brexit

      • Johanne Devlin Trew

      Pages 15-57

   3. The Irish Government’s Diaspora Strategy: Towards a Care Agenda

      • Mark Boyle, Adrian Kavanagh

      Pages 59-79

   4. The Need for a “National“ Diaspora Centre in Ireland

      • Brian Lambkin

      Pages 81-107

   5. Marriage Equality North and South: The Journey After The Gathering

      • Danielle Mackle

      Pages 109-129

5. Echoes from History and Irish Imaginaries

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 131-131

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   2. Bringing It All Back Home: The Fluctuating Reputation of James Orr (1770–1816), Ulster-Scots Poet and Irish Patriot

      • Carol Baraniuk

      Pages 133-156

   3. Gathering Antipathy: Irish Immigrants and Race in America’s Age of Emancipation

      • Brian Kelly

      Pages 157-185

6. Hidden Diasporas

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 187-187

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   2. “Hidden” Diasporas? Second- and Third-Generation Irish in England and Scotland

      • Bronwen Walter

      Pages 189-213

   3. Placeless Patriots: The Misplaced Loyalty of “The Middle Nation”

      • Ultan Cowley

      Pages 215-227

   4. Rafferty’s Return: Diaspora and Dislocation in Edna O’Brien’s “Shovel Kings”

      • Tony Murray

      Pages 229-246

   5. “Coeval but Out of Kilter”: Diaspora, Modernity and “Authenticity” in Irish Emigrant Worker Writing

      • Michael Pierse

      Pages 247-271

7. Back Matter

   Pages 281-299

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This book provides scholarly perspectives on a range of timely concerns in Irish diaspora studies. It offers a focal point for fresh interchanges and theoretical insights on questions of identity, Irishness, historiography and the academy’s role in all of these. In doing so, it chimes with the significant public debates on Irish and Irish emigrant identities that have emerged from Ireland’s The Gathering initiative (2013) and that continue to reverberate throughout the Decade of Centenaries (2012-2023) in Ireland, North and South. In ten chapters of new research on key areas of concern in this field, the book sustains a conversation centred on three core questions: what is diaspora in the Irish context and who does it include/exclude? What is the view of Ireland and Northern Ireland from the diaspora? How can new perspectives in the academy engage with a more rigorous and probing theorisation of these concerns? This thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of history, geography, literature, sociology, tourism studies and Irish studies.

• Irish diaspora
• Irish emigration
• The Gathering
• Irish Studies
• Irish identity
• transnational
• Ulster Scots
• Scots Irish
• white slavery
• Robert Tressell
• Patrick MacGill
• London Irish
• James Hanley
• Northern Irishness
• working-class history
• Brexit
• Irish Government
• the Global Irish
• The Marriage Equality Referendum 2015
• James Orr

“This timely book achieves two unusual aspirations in Irish diaspora studies as it seeks to appraise various lacunae in relevant policy, academic and commercial fields. It considers perspectives from Northern Ireland on diaspora alongside those of the more commonly addressed Republic of Ireland, demonstrating in the process the rootedness in the national of all diaspora imaginaries. And, while both the main destinations of Irish emigrants - USA and Britain - are examined, more space is devoted to reviewing the dynamics of diasporic relations between Britain and Ireland, an often neglected aspect of Irish diaspora imaginations and images.” (Mary Hickman, Emeritus Professor of Irish Studies and Sociology, London Metropolitan University, UK)

• School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, Ulster University, Belfast, United Kingdom

  Johanne Devlin Trew

• School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom

  Michael Pierse

Dr Johanne Devlin Trew is Lecturer in the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, Ulster University, UK. Her research explores migration, diaspora, memory and historical narratives and she is the author of Leaving the North: Migration & Memory, Northern Ireland, 1921-2011 (2013).



Dr Michael Pierse is Lecturer in Irish Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. His research mainly explores the writing and cultural production of Irish working-class life, and over recent years has expanded into new multi-disciplinary themes. He is the author of Writing Ireland’s Working-Class: Dublin After O’Casey (2011).

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